Mujitsu and Tairaku's Shakuhachi BBQ

Hi.

I vote for redundancy.  Leave all the repetition in place.  Music is very repetitious.  39 pieces or a fugue - redundancy everywhere, East or West.  Do you dream that new posters are going to research their question before submitting it?  I was a member of a flute list for a while and they endlessly repeated the same questions, but their archive was not online like this site.  But the same questions were answered the same way endlessly.  That seems to be what music is about.  Idiots repeating themselves.  Many of these people were not stupic.  But they acted that way.  Music is not about reason.

We have examples of reasoning about Zen which is about as rational as music.  If Zen is irrational like music, how are you going to build a database, a rational structure, that includes a Zen section?  Language is an intrument used by reason, but is not itself inherently rational.  Language is as arbitrary as music or nature.

I don't think an attempt to rationalize the shakuhachi forum is going to work.

jb

jb wrote:

I vote for redundancy.  Leave all the repetition in place.  Music is very repetitious.  39 pieces or a fugue - redundancy everywhere, East or West.

I'm not entirely sure I get the connection between this and providing an easy access to answers.

jb wrote:

Do you dream that new posters are going to research their question before submitting it?

No, not everyone at least. I think libraries are a good idea even though I don't think that everyone visits them to learn something. Actually, although having less threads about the same topic is a bonus, I think the most impotant gain from having a compilation of commonly answered questions is that someone who wants to do the research can do so easily without having to wait for the answer for various questions or having to go through all the posts already on the forums. As our member count goes up - and this is great - we also start to get more and more posts.

When I want to learn about something for which there is some online presense, I almost always first go through the FAQ. This gives you a decent idea of what is being talked about in 15 minutes or less. Posting and getting a single answer usually takes longer than that and is almost guaranteed to fail to address many of the potential issues you most likely didn't even think of asking.

jb wrote:

I was a member of a flute list for a while and they endlessly repeated the same questions, but their archive was not online like this site.  But the same questions were answered the same way endlessly.  That seems to be what music is about.  Idiots repeating themselves.  Many of these people were not stupic.  But they acted that way.  Music is not about reason.

Maybe, but again, this is not music. This is a web forum which can be a very educational tool that helps many people - myself included - to learn more about a wonderful instrument. While complete chaos can be a good thing when you are playing, you usually want to avoid it when it comes to learning something.

jb wrote:

We have examples of reasoning about Zen which is about as rational as music.  If Zen is irrational like music, how are you going to build a database, a rational structure, that includes a Zen section?

Zen may be irrational but that doesn't make it in any way difficult to provide canned answers for some questions. Read through the topics on Zen forum right now. There is, for example, a topic on where to buy a tengai. That is not irrational in any way and allows for a simple answer that takes just few lines of text. I've seen the same question asked few times. Each of those threads provides some information which could be merged into a single answer somewhere. Next time someone needs to know he can simply look the answer up. Odds are that such an answer would be more detailed than any of the answers provided already. This is not to say that the same question will never be asked again but nothing short of merging the threads together will stop that from happening.

I hope that clears my view on the topic somewhat.

FAQ's are not necessarily the way to go. (Too often just a rules section, especially on forums.) A Reference section, with information often asked, sounds clearer, and more succinct, for those to use, who would like to research information of that nature.

Perhaps I'm not exactly up to date, but I believe I recently read a post by Tairaku requesting a moderator who would be willing to answer questions by posting links to articles within Shakuhachi Forum which already addressed the topic (http://shakuhachiforum.com/viewtopic.php?id=1109). That sounds quite similar to a FAQ to me...

Zakarius

amokrun wrote:

Zakarius wrote:

Perhaps I'm not exactly up to date, but I believe I recently read a post by Tairaku requesting a moderator who would be willing to answer questions by posting links to articles within Shakuhachi Forum which already addressed the topic (http://shakuhachiforum.com/viewtopic.php?id=1109). That sounds quite similar to a FAQ to me...

Good observation. That is, in fact, why I posted about it. I talked to them about it and figured that this could be a good way to get started. Like said, it doesn't really eliminate the need for such a moderator but it hopefully makes it easier for those who want to research things to do so.

Thanks amokrun. Yes the idea is that when newcomers join the forum they may ask something, say, "What's an utaguchi?". This topic may have already been covered but it didn't occur to the new person to use the search function. If you could then point them in the direction of the answer to their question it's more helpful than just saying, "Use the search function". Of course everybody's on their own in some ways when it comes to using a forum, but we are also all in it together.

Komuso.com has a moderately complete glossary page.  http://komuso.com/glossary.html